I was just curious how high (altitude) FSX would allow you to go.....apparently pretty high.....Incredible the distance you can see to the horizon at different altitudes.

(Also, Cessna was misspelled below...must have been the lack of O2 ?

Also, just underneath the 172 is Elon Musk's Red car with astronaut.

Wanna see something cool?

Put any plane at this altitude (1,200 miles straight up), then un pause the simulation.  True to being in LEO, the aircraft will begin a slow motion tumble back to earth.  You can check the map to see how far you've fallen.It's interesting to see, from an astrophysics POV if you like that kind of thing.   This simulation is more complex than it might appear on the surface 🙂

The max in older versions was (if I remember correctly) 100,000 feet.  For FSX that was increased dramatically, to something like 99,999,999.

I noticed that some strange things happen during the descent.   Above 70,000 feet or so, the aircraft seems to "bounce" back up and starts gaining altitude randomly.   I would have thought it would have fallen straight down until it hits thicker air below about 70,000 feet or so.

I have no explanation for this behavior.

Perhaps it's simulating bouncing off the atmosphere?

I've never seen that happen at 70,000, but I have seen aircraft flop around between 200K and 300K.  Above and below everything is fine, but at that range...